I think Weiner did a fine job of coming clean, taking responsibility, and apologizing. I had predicted that he would "announce he's entering treatment for sex addiction. Possibly with a grim/stoical Huma Abedin at his side." I'm glad he didn't do that. He didn't blame anybody else or any "outside force." He didn't use the nonapology "sorry if you were offended" form.

Now, it seemed pretty obvious that he would have continued deceiving us if he could have gotten away with it, but having made the decision to confess and apologize, he did that well. Of course, I'm assuming that there is nothing more to this story than what he spilled today.

But there was something more, and he needed to do more, and went ahead and did what I predicted he'd do and what I'd given him credit for not doing.

The bill's critics say the loss of these protections will reverse decades of efforts to help people in Madison afford decent housing and avoid homelessness. They say that the city regulations helped keep the actions of inconsiderate, unscrupulous and even biased property owners who cared more about milking the value of their properties than the rights of their tenants in check, especially important given the high numbers of young student renters here....

Advocates predict that bigger landlords in the city with more desirable housing stock will use the screening tools handed to them by the new state law to “keep certain people out,” as Konkel puts it, while smaller landlords with deteriorating properties will accept the tenants nobody else wants.

People typically viewed as problem tenants include minorities with criminal records, undocumented immigrants without Social Security numbers, people on public assistance, and people with disabilities on fixed incomes, say advocates.

The newspaper — The Capital Times — passes along an assertion about how landlords "typically view" people. With "minorities" thrown in as if state and federal law didn't clearly make it illegal for landlords to discriminate based on race and ethnicity.

If you're getting this dressed up, what is the advantage of shorts? It makes no sense. And it looks awful even on these hyper-skinny models. (Also: Are legs like that considered attractive now? How did that happen?)

Anti-Walkerites are disturbed that Wisconsin law enforcement is monitoring social media to learn of plans to for direct action like storming the state Capitol. But I think it would be incompetent not to pay attention to these things.

Hey, people, Twitter and Facebook are public speech — quite visible and searchable. The notion that you have an expectation of privacy there is sheer lunacy.

The NYT reports. Redlich was the Dean of the law school when I was a student there, and he was my teacher in Conlaw2 (a course I now teach). From the obituary:

He helped Jane Jacobs defeat Robert Moses’ plan to build a four-lane highway through Washington Square Park in the late 1950s — brokering an unlikely alliance between Ms. Jacobs, the urban theorist, and Carmine De Sapio, the Tammany boss, that eventually saw not only Moses’ plan killed, but all vehicular traffic banished from the park.

What a hero!

He negotiated the deal in which the City of New York bought and renovated Yankee Stadium in 1971, when the team’s owners had threatened to leave and Mayor John V. Lindsay resolved to make them stay.

Again, a hero.

[In 1963, Redlich became] executive assistant to the Warren Commission’s chief counsel, J. Lee Rankin. In that job, he and several other staff lawyers, including Arlen Specter, the future Pennsylvania senator, devised the single-bullet theory...

The widespread doubt cast on the theory in later years caused Mr. Redlich to tell a Congressional subcommittee reviewing the commission’s findings in 1977, “I think there are simply a great many people who cannot accept what I believe to be the simple truth, that one rather insignificant person was able to assassinate the president of the United States.”

A more ambiguous accomplishment. It resolved everything, but the resolution could never be fully accepted.

Ha ha ha ha. After expressing outrage over a Republican tactic, the Democrats want to do it too.

A coalition of union groups active in state Senate recalls now advocates that Democrats field fake Republican candidates to run in primary elections against GOP state senators - just as Republicans are fielding fake Democrats to run against those who challenging GOP incumbents.

Friday evening, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a statement that neither endorsed nor ruled out the idea, saying the party will "review the options available."

Yeah, one option is to denounce the Republicans who use this nefarious tactic, and the other option is to use it yourself. Just weigh your options, and use the one that you think it more likely to work!

Adopting the fake-Republican strategy might be difficult for Democrats to explain.

Just Thursday, the party sent a statement from Rep. Sandy Pasch (D-Whitefish Bay) attacking Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) over the fact that a fake Democrat, Gladys Huber, had surfaced to run against Pasch in a Democratic primary July 12, potentially forcing an Aug. 9 general recall election.

"We deserve better than dirty tricks that would make Nixon proud," Pasch was quoted as saying. "Given how much taxpayer money will be wasted on this cynical ploy, Sen. Darling's hypocrisy is stunning."

Well, the fact that you've already started using option #1 is one thing to take into account as you weigh your options. That adds weight to option #1, but option #2 might still weigh more heavily.

Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

As NYT presents it, they don't see the advantage in exposing themselves to the judgment of evangelical Christians:

But there are signs that [Iowa's] influence on the nominating process could be ebbing and that the nature of the voters who tend to turn out for the Republican caucuses — a heavy concentration of evangelical Christians and ideological conservatives overlaid with parochial interests — is discouraging some candidates from competing there....

[L]ike Mr. Romney, Mr. Huntsman is a Mormon, a religion viewed with wariness by some conservative Christians....

Mr. Romney’s decision, in particular, suggests that candidates who are viewed suspiciously by the state’s religious conservatives may stand little chance there....

It's distressing to see this conflation of conservatism and prejudice. It's one thing if Iowan Republicans tend to go for someone with a stronger message of social conservatism, quite another if they are hostile to Mormons. Plenty of Mormons are social conservatives, and it just happens that the 2 Mormons in the race are not social conservatives. Can we get some serious research on this point? It's a dangerous thing to allow insinuations of religious bigotry to seep into the public consciousness. I can't tell if the Times is really against bigotry or not. If you portray Iowan religious conservatives as anti-Mormon, in one way, it seems anti-bigotry. But it's also inviting us to feel hostility toward the Iowan evangelicals.

In a prosecution for homicide or in a civil action or proceeding, a statement made by a declarant while believing that the declarant's death was imminent, concerning the cause or circumstances of what the declarant believed to be impending death.

Say what you will about John Edwards, he wasn't the cause of Elizabeth's death.

Unlike many of his peers in the House, Weiner doesn't have a business or even a law degree to fall back on.

Weiner, 46, took home $156,117 in 2010, according to his federal tax returns released by his staff. His humiliated wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, earned $154,000 in 2009, federal records show....

Wow. Any ideas for jobs for him? Does this affect your analysis of whether Huma should leave him (if you stoop to analyzing things like that)?

I think this means he'll stay in Congress, at least until 2012. I'm glad about that. I want politicians to weather these sexual scandals. There must be hundreds of them waiting to burst out, and if Weiner is destroyed, it means all those other men with their Twitter and Facebook peccadilloes are sweating it out and susceptible to blackmail and various other manipulations.

You may be wondering. We're ready to go except for the project of uploading all the old posts and comments onto the new Althouse. (The blog will still be called Althouse. It's just the URL that's changing to althou.se — instead of althouse.blogspot.com.)

Here's what's taking some time. I'm not just starting on a new site and leaving the old posts and comments back here. It will all be over there (and the old stuff will remain here too). The Althouse blog will remain a single, unified opus at the new site. You'll be able to search, click on tags, and browse the archive and get everything all the way back to January 14, 2004, the day this blog began.

At this point in the process of exporting the blog, the great people who are doing all the technical work for me have done nearly all the posts, but there are a whole lot more comments to go. They've exported 23,549 out of 23,599 post, but only 15,262 out of 989,369 comments. It's a big deal to move that much stuff, but moving it all is important to me. Not just the posts, but also the comments. We could go to the new blog much more quickly if I exported only the posts, and preserved the posts with the comments Blogger site, but I don't want that. There are tons of wonderful comments, and they're all coming with me to "Sweden." I'm not going without them. Which means we can't go live until next week.

Isn't it cool that there are nearly 1 million comments on this blog? I wonder what the best comment of all time. The most momentous one for me is: "Meade, this is HUGE! Meade....?" (Explained here.)

I think I will be able to identify the millionth comment, by the way, so keep commenting.

Leonard B. Stern, the creator of Mad Libs always remembered that one, from back in the 1950s.

Mad Libs was conceived in 1953, when Mr. Stern was writing a script for “The Honeymooners.” As he recounted in interviews afterward, he was casting about for a particular word. His friend Roger Price, a humor writer, happened by.

“I need an adjective,” Mr. Stern said.

Mr. Price obligingly supplied two: “clumsy” and “naked.”

Mr. Stern laughed out loud. The word was intended to describe the nose of Ralph Kramden’s boss.

Jaltcoh says: "I almost regret finding this, since I've been watching it compulsively over and over. It might not be the best song ever, but it's at least in the running."

This lushly romantic old song makes an interesting soundtrack to the news of the last couple weeks. Why didn't Anthony Weiner only have eyes for Huma Abedin? You could say that if he'd stuck to sexting — i.e., writing — he'd have saved his eyes for her. But he only started the writing when he liked the woman's photograph.

Is there really any love so fixated on one woman that the man can't even see other women? What a grand fantasy of love! I have no idea if this is the best song ever, but it is surely in the running as the song that creates the most unrealistic expectation of what love will be like.

The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense

That's the headline in the Daily News, for a story about a viral security-cam video. "Steal" should have been in quotes, because they don't even want the bike. One of them rides it for a 5 seconds then leaves it next to the chopped down ginkgo tree.

The sorry saga was captured on security camera video then posted on YouTube, where viewers from coast to coast posted unkind things about the Brooklyn boobs.

I clicked through to see what people had written, but comments have been disabled, and all the old comments are all deleted.

[Weiner] is a very busy man.... He exists under a constant pressure cooker of self-analysis and public appraisal. Like other politicians, he needs something to take the edge off. For some people, regardless of occupation, that could mean booze, drugs, gambling, food or shopping. For high functioning men like Weiner and other officials who have lived through such scandals, who are constantly on the go, that leaves one tried and true source of a reliable high. The affirmation that comes when someone lets you know they want to sleep with you. Or even cyber-sleep with you.

This is sex for many people now.... No time for slowly moving toward one another with a combination of hope and caution, lust and integrity. One can push a button and get something beyond porn. Porn is essentially two dimensional. One sees and hears. Internet sexting can be perceived as three dimensional by adding the component of "feel", regardless of how cheap and unearned those feelings are. That person on the screen is doing whatever they're doing... just for you.....

We tell ourselves that these devices help us communicate more effectively. What they actually do is allow us to bypass the person lying right next to us, across the room from us or at an airport heading home to us, in order to meet our immediate, even inconvenient, needs. To bypass their moods, their current view of us and their own desires, or lack thereof.

It's so sad, isn't it? Baldwin feels sorry for Weiner... and for the modern man.

ADDED: So... Hillary disaggregates herself from Obama, moves off to a lofty and distant place, from which she can observe American political events unfolding, and... if it becomes necessary, if Obama implodes or goes LBJ on us, she is there, ready to be the Democratic candidate for President in 2012.

(The photograph is something the camera took on its own, as I was sliding the cover closed. It looks like comets so I called this café post "Kohoutek" after the wonderfully overhyped comet that seemed, at the time — do you remember? — to symbolize the lameness of Gerald Ford. I wrote Kafe Kohoutek instead of Kohoutek Café for this café post — a "café post" is just an open thread — because there used to be a really cool restaurant here in Madison called Kafe Kohoutek. That was back in the '90s. The name was a wry reference back to the fizzled comet, 90s nostalgia for the 70s. And here I am now, in the 10s, reminiscing about the 70s and the 90s, all because my camera had a mind of its own.)

Gingrich was intent on using technology and standing out at debates to get traction while his advisers believed he needed to run a campaign that incorporated both traditional, grassroots techniques as well as new ideas.

One official said the last straw came when Gingrich went forward with taking a long-planned cruise with his wife last week in the Greek isles....

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH said: "Here's Calista Gingrich to tell us what she thinks":

Two of the key operatives who just left Gingrich’s staff -Dave Carney and Rob Johnson – have been major advisers to Gov. Rick Perry. Does this mean Perry is about to jump in the presidential race? Sure looks like it.

We face a Congress that puts forth an ever-increasing volume of laws in general, and of criminal laws in particular. It should be no surprise that as the volume increases, so do the number of imprecise laws. And no surprise that our indulgence of imprecisions that violate the Constitution encourages imprecisions that violate the Constitution. Fuzzy, leave-the-details-to-be-sorted-out-by-the-courts legislation is attractive to the Congressman who wants credit for addressing a national problem but does not have the time (or perhaps the votes) to grapple with the nittygritty. In the field of criminal law, at least, it is time to call a halt. I do not think it would be a radical step—indeed, I think it would be highly responsible—to limit ACCA to the named violent crimes. Congress can quickly add what it wishes. Because the majority prefers to let vagueness reign, I respectfully dissent.

I remember the time a colleague of mine yelled at me for saying exactly that. She was working on a complicated project dealing with how courts should sort out the details in for Congresses that indulge themselves with fuzziness.

“Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world and now they're lobbying for extra tax loopholes,” said US Uncut San Francisco organizer Leslie Dreyer, “During a time of devestating budget cuts, we cannot afford for companies like Apple to try to finagle special treatment. I can sync my iPhone to my MacBook, why can’t I sync it to my values?”

That's what you get for being a conspicuously liberal corporation. The ultra-lefties target you... presumably, because they think you'll cave or support them in some way. You don't want look like an actual for-profit, capitalistic corporation, do you, Apple? That's what you get for cultivating the image of benevolence!

I completely fail to understand why any Republican would call for Weiner's resignation. Are you kidding? I want him in Congress forever, if possible! I want him representing his party on every other cable news show, as he has done for the last several years. I want people to snicker every time they see a "D" behind a Congressman's name. Anthony Weiner is the gift that keeps on giving, the twit that keeps on tweeting!

Yet the Democrats — it seems — would like the Republicans to do the work of ousting their masturbating boy. Here's Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

How about this headline: "Pelosi Wants a Weiner Probe.".. Okay, now, she was quick on the draw here, folks. ... Pelosi and the Democrats scared to death. "Oh, my God, this guy's poison! Get him out of here. Get him to the Ethics Committee."... Pelosi knows that the House is now in Republican hands. Therefore the Ethics Committee, at the end of the day, has a Republican majority....

The liberals are throwing Weiner under the bus and they're asking him to resign and a number of things, or could it be -- I just throw this out there as a possibility; I know it's gonna sound lame to some of you and it's gonna sound like a stretch but -- maybe Pelosi and the Democrats are hoping they send Weiner up there to the Ethics Committee and the Republicans go bonkers with it and start overreaching and turn Weiner into a victim of these rascally Republicans. She's doing this as a way of creating sympathy for the poor guy because these mean-spirited Republicans won't let him speak.

Now, I don't think this theory has any credence 'cause I don't think the Republicans have it in 'em to act that way. I don't think that they would overreach. But I do know that when it comes to the Democrats, everything is not what it appears to be on the surface. So I'm not totally convinced that simply demanding that the Ethics Committee take care of Weiner is, in fact, Pelosi and the Democrats wanting to wash their hands of Weiner.

Wash their hands of Weiner... Pelosi Wants a Weiner Probe... Rush loves to dabble in the deniable dirty talk. But don't you think he's right that the Democrats would like to find a way to lure Republicans into the ones who end up looking bad? Those terrible Puritans, who want to end sex for everybody.

The security was necessary after John Codie, a trustee of the $8 billion charitable trust, reported that Trouble had received 20 to 30 death and kidnapping threats....

Helmsley, who cut two grandchildren out of her will and evicted her son's widow after his death, was often seen cuddling the canine, which was always impeccably dressed.

Helmsley, who did 18 months in federal prison on tax evasion charges in the early 1990s, wanted Trouble interred with her in the 12,000-square-foot family mausoleum in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Westchester County.

But maybe you've noticed: Cemeteries for human being have a policy against the inclusion of nonhuman remains. Otherwise you'd see dogs buried next to people all over the place.

The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, which has been a shibboleth for some well known writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics.

The Government Accountability Board... took note of Democrats' claims of fraud by circulators of the petitions against the three, but disallowed only about 230 signatures, connected to just one of the circulators, because of the fraud.

Good.

We just watched Senator Grothman on the Eliot Spitzer show, and he said that "even on [his] darkest days," he did not picture the Democrats taking over the majority in the senate.

(By the way, it was really weird watching that, because Grothman was standing outside the Capitol, a couple miles from where we live, and the tornado warning siren went off. The siren went off on the television, not where we could hear it live, but it seemed to apply to us. We were having a big thunderstorm, with mothball-sized hail.)

ADDED: I had to correct the dates for the elections. Sorry I'd misread that. This means that when the Democrats face recall, we will already know whether there is a potential shift in the majority. That is, if at least 3 Republicans lose their seats, then it will create tremendous pressure on the Republicans to oust a Democrat to regain their majority. I'm assuming we'll know the outcome of the election at that point, but maybe we'll need some recounts and court challenges before we know.

"My dear people it is a f****cking MOVIE. It is all fictional. Not real. It is all make-belief. It is art. Give people their own choice to watch it or not. If people can't handle or like my movies they just don't watch them."

You know what else is horrific. This has me completely terrified. I just now looked at photos of Palin's new home in Scottsdale and the whole place is empty except for one exceedingly macabre bit of taxidermy.

By far the most disturbing information that we have been privy to—there is, no doubt, more out there that we don’t know—is the transcript of a nine-month "sexting" relationship Weiner had with a Las Vegas blackjack dealer. Radar Online posted the transcript, and it is rife with misogyny and distorted views about women. In referring to oral sex, Wiener tells her, “You will gag on me before you c** with me in you” and “[I’m] thinking about gagging your hot mouth with my c***.” This is not about sex. It’s about dominating and inflicting physical pain on a woman, a fantasy the hard-corn porn industry makes billions of dollars on selling to men. You don’t want to gag a woman with your penis unless you have some serious issues with the way you see women.

Hard-corn porn? Hilarious typos aside... let's not go all Women's Studies about the man's efforts at writing about sex. It is not an easy literary task.

Okay. I just went and read the entire Weiner/Weiss transcript. (PDF.) Read it out loud, in fact! A few thoughts:

I don't know about anyone else but Im alright with this. Walker's actions affect many of these people more than me. They have every right to know what is going on in the state; most of them probably already do. Honestly I find the fact tht he was addressing this group offensive. It's like when he goes and visits a school. What a hypocritical liar.

"The wave-forming process taking place on the surface of the Sun is the same as that which takes place in the Earth's oceans. It's known as a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and involves two different fluids flowing past each other. Off the beach, the air flows past the sea and rapidly turns tiny ripples into mighty swells and breakers: on the surface of the sun, plasma erupts in mighty spouts, so becoming less dense, and then blows across the surface of non-erupted plasma to create waves just like those of Earth - only much, much bigger and hotter."

We try day after day for answers. Even though Ms. Edwards says she tried repeatedly to get help for her little girl. We get this email response from the Milwaukee Public School spokeswoman. She tells me MPS only heard about one incident back in January and that they blame Ms Edwards little girl for that fight. Since January MPS says bus 83 has been just fine.

“We continue to monitor, and all has been quiet on this bus. Other than this single report by Ms. Edwards – which was resolved - there have been no reports of bullying on the bus by this parent or other parents, by any of the children, and no reports made by the bus driver.”

No reports of trouble. Not even from the driver. Pretty surprising considering what our cameras caught street after street, hour after hour both times we tried….

Calling themselves the #bornfreecrew on Twitter, members of the group closely monitored those whom Mr. Weiner was following, taking it upon themselves to contact young women they believed to be “schoolgirls,” and urging them publicly to stay away from him, according to an analysis of posts on Twitter’s public stream.

Among those warned was Gennette Cordova, the 21-year-old who received the infamous gray-underpants pic. It was the leader of this group Dan Wolfe — @PatriotUSA76 — who caught that pic and passed it on to Andrew Breitbart, touching off all the recent publicity.

In several instances the congressman dropped his online contact with women after they were identified by the crew, suggesting that Mr. Weiner might have been aware of its actions....

Throughout May, [Dan] Wolfe and other members contacted other young women Mr. Weiner was following, including a 16-year-old from California who started a campaign on Twitter to get the congressman to be her prom date.

The next day, [Michael] Stack, posting on Twitter, sent her a message saying in part, “if you’re a minor and he’s following you, well, seems a little creepy if not in ny,” copying @RepWeiner on the post. The next day, on May 18, the girl posted: “Well @RepWeiner unfollowed me.”

The Times characterizes #bornfreecrew as an example "cyberstalkers, who track and criticize [a targeted politician's] every move." That makes Weiner sound like a victim. But monitoring politicians, for the purpose of exposing faults of legitimate interest to the public, has little similarity to following a private citizen for the purpose of horning into her (or his) life.

It would make more sense to say that Weiner was stalking those girls than that Wolfe and Stack were stalking Weiner.

Let me attest to my hatred of fluorescent light by saying that this was the article that caused me — after all these years — to click through and subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.

And, here: Buy some 100-watt bulbs. You have until the end of the year to build up your lifetime stock of 100-watt bulbs. Unless Congress votes for the "Bulb Act" and repeals the loathsome law George W. Bush "signed in one of his all-too typical late-term decisions."

The ban passed at the height of the global warming fad-scare when all proper thinkers were supposed to sacrifice to the anticarbon gods.

Is the fad-scare over?!

You know if you put the argument for repeal like that, it's going to intimidate politicians who are still afraid of being labeled AGW deniers.

Cannon & Dunphy paid for "Habush" and "Rottier" so that its ad would appear above Habush Habush & Rottier when people go looking for the well-known and widely advertised Wisconsin personal injury firm. Claiming a violation of Wisconsin privacy law, Habush sued and — we learn today — lost.

The court rejected Cannon's argument that it had a First Amendment right to use the other firm's names like this, on the ground that the process of using the name in the computer searching process isn't speech. Habush lost, however, because the use of its name was not unreasonable.

[Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Charles F. Kahn Jr.] characterized internet key word search terms as the modern equivalent of proximity advertising that business competitors have done for years:
"In ancient times, people used paper telephone directories. A user could find a particular attorney by viewing the alphabetical listings while carefully avoiding the block ads preceding and to either side of the name being searched. The plaintiffs themselves sought the attention of everyone seeking anything in the directory by placing a full page ad on the back cover of the telephone book."

The comments at the link are mainly people saying: Who cares who wins this lawsuit? They're all lawyers!

Police were called to the couple's home by her 79-year-old husband William Lueders, who used "uh huh" to communicate with a 911 dispatcher. According to a criminal complaint, officers found Karen Lueders carrying a New Year's horn in her hand and singing Christmas carols outside the house.

In a written statement, Willard Lueders told police he went into the bathroom while his wife was on the toilet Dec. 6. When he leaned over to kiss her, she went into a "manic state," grabbing his genitals and biting his tongue.

William Lueders has recovered and is able to speak clearly. A judge gave the couple permission to continue living together, and they have appeared at court appearances holding hands.

Obviously, she signed a contract. What did it say? Is there some understanding that the test shot photo will not be used, that she retained some control over which products her image could be used to promote, or that her image could only represent youth and beauty? What went on before the lawsuit was filed? She's damaging both herself and the product by going public with the dispute, because we're all invited to stare at her aged face, in the unflattering photograph we might otherwise never have seen or noticed. Meanwhile, the company suffers from having their ad revealed as a fraud. I'm thinking Forsling tried to get more money when she saw how the photo was used, and threatened to file the lawsuit, which we're seeing now, because the company called her bluff. So, great, everybody loses. Except us, the consumers who might have believed a little too much in Plantscription serum by Origins.

(Personally, I never buy a product called "serum." It sounds spookily medical.)

ADDED: Jon Stewart should just come clean and admit that it has never been the show's agenda to mock people in the order that they are mockable. The calculation has always included how much Stewart & Co. enjoy mocking them. He's a comedian and not a journalist, so it doesn't make sense to call him biased. He's choosing his targets for his reasons, which include political ideology and personal relationships. We understand that. Move on. The effort to be funny about that last night failed. But I hope some viewers have learned from this and become more sophisticated about what the show is. The show influences viewers to think that various people are stupid/evil/corrupt, but it could just as well be making them think that a different set of characters is stupid/evil/corrupt.

Not long after Weiner's news conference yesterday, at about 5:20, Wolf Blitzer interviewed Dr. Laura Berman, who said (my transcription):

[Weiner is] known for being very aggressive, for being very volatile. He clearly — even his hairline and his jawbone — he clearly is a man who has a tremendous amount of testosterone. That's not an excuse, but if you look at him, if you look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, if you look at most of these high power men, who are highly aggressive men, and they get into all this sexual trouble. It's often hand in hand with high levels of testosterone, which means that he has an extremely high libido.

"... giving Republicans who control the Legislature hope the court may act quickly in their favor.... Tough questions came for both sides during 5 1/2 hours of arguments that seasoned attorneys said were the longest in memory, if not in state history."

Robert Jambois, the attorney for Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha), told the justices they should issue a ruling that makes it clear lawmakers cannot keep the public away from its business - especially when it is considering controversial legislation.

"If the open meetings law doesn't mean anything to the Wisconsin Legislature... then it doesn't mean anything ever," Jambois said....

The open meetings law has an exception that allows the Legislature to write rules that exempt it from the meetings law. The two sides disagree whether lawmakers have established a rule on when meetings must be noticed for joint committees.

School Board member Maya Cole criticized Matthews for harboring an "us against them" mentality at a time when the district needs more cooperation than ever to successfully educate students. "His behavior has become problematic," Cole said. "In his mind he is doing the right thing. But he doesn't see that in the political process, he's preventing good people from coming forward and running for office for the right reasons."

Board member Ed Hughes recently wrote on his blog that teachers unions "aren't all that necessary" because the district isn't "running a sweatshop." "It may be that John Matthews' ramped-up rhetoric is best understood not as a protest against school district over-reaching in bargaining, since that did not happen, but as a cry against the possibility of his own impending irrelevance," Hughes wrote.

The second comment — right after "Wow!" — at a post called "Rep. Anthony Weiner for President" at the "progressive feminist blog" Shakesville. It's from last July, when Weiner got "quite rightly, mad as hell about it—and he's not going to take it anymore" at the blogger Melissa McEwan saw it, responding to this Weiner freakout on the floor of the House:

Other progressive feminist comments:

I've watched this clip about a thousand times today. I absolutely adore him....

I just saw this piece on CNN. Maude bless him. THIS is what we need more of....

I adore this. I may have to watch it later with headphones after the kids are in bed, so that I can REALLY turn it up. "The gentleman is correct in sitting" may quickly become part of my lexicon, right alongside "here we have pie."

I gotta say, I totally dig this guy. I love that he rants and tells it how it is in these moments. I love his passion.

Someone clone his backbone NOW and send it in pretty packages to the rest of the do-nothing Dems in office. He is made of 50% win and 50% badass.

Clone his backbone? Clone his frontbone!

Probably they can hear my loud, excited SQUEEEEEEE all the way to Washington....

Swoon! I love this guy!...

*giggle* Hate to say it, but I can already hear all the "Clinton/Weiner" jokes now....

Well, now, there's a progressive feminist with great hearing. She could hear all the way into next June.

Whenever Anthony Weiner is on Rachel Maddow, I get this big, goofy smile on my face.

You think Huma is suffering, but have some sympathy for all the progressive feminist fangirls who'd thought they'd found true love this time.

WaPo reports Romney ahead 49% to 46%, among registered voters. (Among all Americans, the 2 men are tied at 47%.) Obama is ahead of the other 5 Republicans, and "[a]lmost two-thirds of all Americans say they “definitely would not” vote for Palin for president."

The Post-ABC poll asked Republicans and GOP-leaning independents whom they would vote for if a primary or caucus were held now in their state. Romney topped the list, with 21 percent, followed by Palin at 17 percent. No one else reached double digits, although former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has suddenly shown interest in becoming a candidate, is close, at 8 percent. Without Palin in the race, Romney scores 25 percent, with all others in the single digits.

Surely, a lot of that is name recognition. It's not really fair to Pawlenty. But let's see if the Republicans have the cohesiveness to resist tearing down Romney. Meanwhile, Democrats ought to make Palin their new McCain. Give her a free ride, until she's clinched the nomination... and then destroy her.

"... to make him feel like our hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need."

A top aide to Secretary of State Clinton, Abedin issued no statements of support for her embattled husband. She was a no-show Monday at two public State Department events.

"I love my wife very much, and we have no intention of splitting up over this," Weiner insisted. "I love her very much, and she loves me."

No intention of splitting up over this. Those last 2 words jumped out at me.

Several political pros cheered her absence yesterday.

"In general, it's very difficult for women constituents to look at the grieving wife up there," said Democratic consultant George Arzt. "It's bad PR."

The better move for Weiner, Arzt said, was "to look like he can take it all by himself and stand up there."

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato took to Twitter with a similar view: "At least Weiner didn't make his wife come out and gaze lovingly at him."

Ha ha. He's a PR expert! He's not advising Weiner in advance. He's dealing with the facts he's stuck with. This is what the PR man says when the wife isn't there. What did the Democratic consultants say when Silda Spitzer stood by her man?

As the "body woman" to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Huma Abedin is tasked with accompanying the former first lady on diplomatic globetrotting missions.

Weiner, it seems, uses the timing of her foreign affairs to pursue domestic ones online.

For instance, last month, while Abedin and Clinton were in Rome meeting with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Weiner was chatting up Texas nursing student Meagan Broussard.

I wonder what conversations Huma is having with Hillary — the world's most famous stander by of her man.

The political power couple met while Abedin was on the campaign trail during Clinton's 2008 White House bid. By 2009, they were engaged....

Didn't Abedin know the kind of man she was marrying? He was 45, and had never married previously. As Hillary's close assistant, she had to be sophisticated about the ways of oversexed, extroverted, narcissistic husbands. What was the marriage supposed to be, anyway? They were conspicuously a glamorous "power couple," for public purposes, but what was he allowed to do in private? What were their understandings? At the press conference yesterday, Weiner said that she asked how he could be so dumb, which made me think what mattered most was that people found out and she was shamed and embarrassed. Was it the public image that mattered, or was it to be a loyal, deeply bonded marriage in private?

Unlike Bill and Hillary, Weiner and Abedin have only been married a year, and they have no children. And the husband's career is deeply compromised at this point. They're not going to become the Democratic Party's next Bill and Hillary. The glamorous power couple is defunct. What happens to the private Tony and Huma?

Replaying Anthony Weiner when he was in full liar mode. This interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl is now hilarious. Don't just read it. Play the clip to experience the intensity of the pressure Weiner brazenly applies to Karl. He tries to shame Karl: you did "zero research," you don't "understand how social networks work," you're impugning the ordinary people who follow me, you're making "a pretty charged supposition," "Do you really think that’s fair question? I mean do you?," I am "a person who’s married"...

... I want you to take it seriously that when you ask a question like that it is charged with implication and it is simply not fair. It is not fair to me. It’s not fair to my family. It’s not fair to that poor girl who’s now been besieged because of the implication.... I would urge you. I would urge you my friend to refocus on what you think the actual issue is. This is a Twitter hoax, a prank that was done. I was the victim of this. This poor girl was the victim of this.

... This poor girl! I was the victim! Unfair! Unfair! What a terrible journalist you are! Shame!

Every would-be journalist should study this clip. This is what lying looks like. This is how a powerful, ambitious individual endeavors to push you back.

The brain is a pattern-recognition machine, after all, and when focused properly, it can quickly deepen a person’s grasp of a principle, new studies suggest. Better yet, perceptual knowledge builds automatically: There’s no reason someone with a good eye for fashion or wordplay cannot develop an intuition for classifying rocks or mammals or algebraic equations, given a little interest or motivation.

“When facing problems in real-life situations, the first question is always, ‘What am I looking at? What kind of problem is this?’ ” said Philip J. Kellman, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Any theory of how we learn presupposes perceptual knowledge — that we know which facts are relevant, that we know what to look for.”

The challenge for education, Dr. Kellman added, “is what do we need to do to make this happen efficiently?”

The article discusses teaching children math, but I work at teaching adults law. In math, the problems have specific answers, in law, people disagree about the answers. When judges and lawyers disagree about how various texts apply to real cases, we tend to accuse each other of being biased in one way or another. But we see that bias — and our own supposedly right answer — with the eye that we have developed.

June 6, 2011

Rushing the building, rushing the bank, trying to block traffic – the police, who could not have been more accommodating to and patient with the protesters during February and March – this is the thanks the police now get. It would not be inappropriate for the protesters to now sing to themselves, in harmony, with feeling, and all together now, their well-practiced chant of "shame, shame, shame."

(Meade's comment has to go through moderation over there, and as I post this, it has not yet appeared.)

Why didn't I blog about it, when I was standing by to blog Weiner? Because I was watching CNN! CNN did not show Breitbart. There was some talk about it, but I was recording on a DVR and fastforwarding. At one point, they showed Breitbart, who was talking, but they were not including the audio track. The CNN folk were talking amongst themselves. Anyway, here's the Breitbart stuff, via Politico:

Next time there's an unfolding news story that moves me to put on the television, I am not going to CNN.

ADDED: Another thing about the CNN coverage, they kept referring to Weiner as "tearful." On screen, the text said "tearful." What nonsense! The man did not cry. He did a Clinton-at-Ron-Brown's-funeral eye-wipe, but he did not cry.

ADDED: He's deeply sorry. And he confesses that "over the past few years, I have engaged in several inappropriate conversations conducted over Twitter, Facebook, email, and occasionally, on the phone with women I had met on line. I have exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about 6 women over the last 3 years. For the most part, these communications took place before my marriage, though some have sadly took (sic) place after. To be clear, I have never met any of these women or had physical relationships at any time. I haven't told the truth, and I have done things I deeply regret. I brought pain to the people I care about the most, and the people who believed in me. And for that, I'm deeply sorry."

On to questions from the press.

MORE: A reporter asks about an "X-rated photo" that Andrew Breitbart has implied that he has: "Can you say that is not true?" Weiner: "No, I cannot."

AND: Asked what his wife has known and when, he talks about her awareness of the things done before the marriage, then is pinned down into saying that he deceived her about the famous gray-underpants-tweet just as he deceived the rest of us.

ALSO: Describing his wife's reaction, he says she called him dumb.

AND: I think Weiner did a fine job of coming clean, taking responsibility, and apologizing. I had predicted that he would "announce he's entering treatment for sex addiction. Possibly with a grim/stoical Huma Abedin at his side." I'm glad he didn't do that. He didn't blame anybody else or any "outside force." He didn't use the nonapology "sorry if you were offended" form.

Now, it seemed pretty obvious that he would have continued deceiving us if he could have gotten away with it, but having made the decision to confess and apologize, he did that well. Of course, I'm assuming that there is nothing more to this story than what he spilled today.

He's not resigning, and he's not splitting up with his wife, he said. I don't know if he can control all that. If you were his wife, would you leave him? Realize that you don't know what their understandings are. She may very well accept this behavior. He doesn't physically contact the other women. He does things on line that sophisticated people might characterize as more like enjoying pornography than like having an in-person sexual affair.

NOTE: I'm not suggesting you're unsophisticated if you don't minimize this behavior and liken it to the use of pornography. I'm not even saying that you're unsophisticated if you expect husbands to refrain from using pornography... and from masturbating. But I do think that intelligent spouses draw their lines in different places.

"... in spite of David Blaska’s doom and gloom about some sort of Leftist Apocalypse happening as a result of the event’s city approval. Police presence was high, including mounted units for some reason. They were met with what mostly turned out to be an eclectically assembled, awkwardly located family camping trip in downtown Madison. There’s still lots of camping left to do, so let’s hope the eggs being tossed from high-rise condos on the square continue to miss the friendly protest."

Is there anyone else in American public life who is treated like Sarah Palin? Here's this historian, forced to say she wasn't wrong — after all the Sarah-haters have mocked her — and he instinctively grasps for a way to knock her down again. If she got something right, it must just have been an accident.

One of the most pernicious and dangerous features of Palin is her clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts she has cited are not actually facts, but delusions. And her vanity and pathologies are so deep she will insist that black is white until her minions actually find a source to prove it.

She's dangerous; she's shrewd; she's an exhibitionist. But she is also, we must keep reminding ourselves, a farce. What worries me about this political leader incapable of telling fantasy apart from fact is that, in a long and deep recession, someone who can lie that readily and manipulate religious and cultural resentment as well as she does is a danger. Not just to America, but to the world.

We must keep reminding ourselves... isn't that the attitude of someone with a clinical refusal to understand reality, to accept error, to acknowledge when the facts cited are not actually facts, but delusions. You have something you want to believe about Sarah Palin, and whatever new information you receive, you reflexively remind yourself that she is a farce. Applying your own standard, at what point would you be a farce?

In another post, Sullivan says "I fear I'm headed to crazy-land." But he's talking about his beard.

UPDATE at 2:12 Central Time: CNN is saying that Weiner will be making some kind of statement "from a Sheraton Hotel" in NYC at 4 ET. My prediction — and you heard it here first! — is that he'll announce he's entering treatment for sex addiction. Possibly with a grim/stoical Huma Abedin at his side.

"Its past is unremarkable and un-American. As you may recall from your middle-school history books, many accoutrements of Western life first appeared in Egypt and then spread to the Romans via Greece. Prophylactics are a notable example. Pie is another one. The pies of the ancients, rather than being oozing desserts, were combinations of savory foods baked in a pot made of tough dough. (In our evolutionary tree of Western cooking, pies, tellingly, share a branch with the most hit-or-miss of all edible things, the casserole.) This crust-pot baking method spread through Europe and gained popularity through the Middle Ages, since the dough shell, called a bake-meat (later, just as appetizingly, a coffin), allowed meats to stew without losing moisture. It also helped seal off the meal and slow down spoilage. "For hundreds of years," Janet Clarkson points out in her jaunty account of pie development, Pie: A Global History, "it was the only form of baking container—meaning everything was pie." Pie culture grew with the advent of modern pastry dough during the 16th century, at which point cooks in more ambitious kitchens started to experiment with sweeter fillings. (Queen Elizabeth is said to have eaten some of the first fruit pies.) This is the true origin of our pie tradition. Early apple pies weren't American and sweet at all. They were unsugared, tough, and manufactured by the British."

Being polarizing is not quite the same thing as being unpopular. In Walker’s case, that partisan divide reflects both a strength and weakness.

The weakness is Walker’s horrible standing with Democrats. Walker’s approval rating among Democratic voters (9%) is the very worst on this list. The strength is his remarkable popularity with Republicans. Walker’s job rating among GOP voters is the best on this list....

Walker’s numbers in this regard look much less like a governor’s than a president’s. Presidents are such omnipresent public figures that virtually everyone has an opinion about them.

The extreme polarization over Walker is also more typical of presidents than governors. Walker is the only governor in these polls who generates as much partisan division in his or her state as President Obama does.

June 5, 2011

We're in the final testing phase! I think it looks beautiful — very crisp and clean. And I think you're going to love what the comments page looks like. It will have buttons to make it easy to do links, blockquotes, boldface, and italics.

After all these years, I will be breaking out of Blogger. The new blog will be here.

Here's how the tent city protest looked at about 1 p.m. today. (Meade shot the video. I edited.)

We were up at the Capitol Square riding bikes, as many Madison streets were closed for the "Ride the Drive" event.

(I'm not too enthusiastic about "Ride the Drive," by the way. Clearing out all the car traffic makes an occasion, which attracts attention and gets a big crowd of people biking at the same time. But it sends the message that the cars are a big nuisance, so I don't think it really encourages people to bike on other days, and it may even discourage them. It did work to get children out biking on the streets, but I don't think it's especially safe or enjoyable to bike with children. Unlike cars, children tend not to proceed in a straight line.)

I am a happy, fun girl, and my mother gives me joy and laughter every day of my life! She is one of the most hilarious people on the planet! That fact we both tricked all of you is the biggest joke of all. You people are supposed to be intelligent, but all you have demonstrated is ignorance. When I spell, I am in what I call "the zone". Which, if you paid attention to after I was out, you would've noticed us joking around in our chairs. I know I don't smile enough on stage, and she usually sits in the audience making funny faces to make me laugh and I cannot see her when she is on stage.

Basically what you have spent hours doing, is making fun of what I look like, and my mother's appearance. It appears that you are all the ones with personality disorders to pick on a fellow speller like this. You are all cruel people, and my mother's love will get me through how miserable YOU ALL MAKE ME!!!

Although there have been some violent incidents and death threats, overall, despite the talk from many right-leaning pundits about "union goons," the actual danger posed by the union members appears to have been very small by labor-historical standards.

The protests have been huge, and organizers have tried very hard to keep them nonviolent, but now are they to be criticized for not threatening violence? Reynolds says in the old days, union protests involved "miners, steelworkers and the like," who, working together, developed a mindset like combat troops. The unstated implication is that these were macho men.

But miners and steelworkers are one thing. When the public employees of, say, Wisconsin hit the streets, it looked more like a bunch of disgruntled DMV clerks and graduate teaching assistants, because, well, that's what it was.

He doesn't come right out and say, now we're talking about females and less manly men, but isn't that the implication? I'm sure Glenn would acknowledge (and encourage) women to take on mining, steelworking, and combat, but it seems clear that he is valuing the traditional male stereotype over the traditional female stereotype.

America's DMV clerks aren't known for toughness and dedication on the job, and it would be asking a lot to expect them to display such characteristics for the first time when they're off the job.

I think the protesters who chanted and slept on the Capitol floor for weeks on end and marched in the Wisconsin winter over and over again, deserve credit for dedication and for keeping things nonviolent. They are back now with their tent city — Walkerville — and it seems pretty positive and well-organized. They haven't abandoned the demonstrations and protests, even as they have also applied themselves to court battles and elections. Reynolds characterizes them as having moved on first to an election and then to the courts:

When the street protests didn't work out, the public employee unions decided to make a "nonpartisan" judicial election a referendum over Wisconsin's anti-union legislation.

The Service Employees International Union and other labor groups went all in on the election, but still lost....

So they lost that election, but they've got 6 recall elections coming up next month. The demonstrations continue and election maneuvers continue.

[T]he public employee unions have been better in the legal system than on the streets, getting Wisconsin's Democrat-friendly judicial system to rule in favor of the unions despite rather shaky grounds for doing so.

But mastery of rules and discretion in employing them is exactly what you'd expect from an army of DMV clerks, as opposed to steelworkers, isn't it?

Why isn't that a good thing? Working through the courts, respecting the rule of law? I know, you might not like the rulings they extract from the judges — judges that you may think are partisan. But what are you saying? They should scare us with street violence? You say you want a revolution? Why taunt them as "an army of DMV clerks" when they work within the system? Isn't that a good thing? I understand that you want their side to lose, but this is an op-ed about tactics.